Name that Blog Contest ends SUNDAY

Our Name that Blog Contest ends on Sunday, February 28 at midnight.  If you have not yet submitted an entry or if you have additional suggestions, there is still time.  Here are the details:

During the month of February, the Library will be running a contest to name our new blog and we invite Wofford students, faculty, and staff to contribute suggestions. The contest ends on Sunday, February 28 at midnight. The winning name will be announced Monday, March 8. Please email your suggestions to loreesg@wofford.edu. The first 20 participants will receive 5 Terrier Bucks.  And, the contributor of the winning name will receive a $25 Starbucks gift card and, of course, the honor of naming the blog!

About the blog:

We will be posting events, happenings and news related to our library, as well as information about the larger information and technology landscape as it relates to libraries and research. For example, we will be posting information about new books and electronic resources added to our collection, as well as topics like search engine news, the latest on digital collections, and research and technology tips.

Thanks again to all of you who have already submitted an entry!  We appreciate your help with naming our blog!

CodeOrgan Translates Web Sites Into Music

CodeOrgan is a strange, but fun new site that translates any web page into music.  Here's a clip from Mashable explaining how it works:

"It analyses the text in the body of the supplied URL and follows an algorithm to render that site into a musical composition. It chooses a drum pattern, synth style and key based on the contents of the page, and plays back the associated music via the “Play this website” button."

Read Mashable Post
Visit CodeOrgan

From the Archives - 1906 basketball

This image just came to the archives today, and I've posted an entry about it on the Archives blog. Here it is!

"Publishing: The Revolutionary Future"

In this article in the New York Review of Books, the respected book publisher and book technology innovator Jason Epstein peers into the murky depths of his crystal ball and tries to glimpse the future of publishing in light of e-readers, books-on-demand technology, and Amazon.

Though Gutenberg's invention made possible our modern world with all its wonders and woes, no one, much less Gutenberg himself, could have foreseen that his press would have this effect. And no one today can foresee except in broad and sketchy outline the far greater impact that digitization will have on our own future. With the earth trembling beneath them, it is no wonder that publishers with one foot in the crumbling past and the other seeking solid ground in an uncertain future hesitate to seize the opportunity that digitization offers them to restore, expand, and promote their backlists to a decentralized, worldwide marketplace. New technologies, however, do not await permission. They are, to use Schumpeter's overused term, disruptive, as nonnegotiable as earthquakes.

Read the full article.

Also, consider this: Epstein mentions in his article the Espresso Book Machine, a project which he was involved in. Watch the video below to see the machine in action.



Want one? Save your pennies - current price tag is $101,500 - $125,500. But in ten years....who knows what the future holds?

Happy Birthday, George Frideric Handel!

George Frideric Handel was born on February 23, 1685 in Halle.  To celebrate his birthday, you might enjoy listening to his pieces through our online music collections:

Classical Music Library's Handel, George Frideric 1685 - 1759 page (only available on campus)
Find Handel in the Naxos Music Library

Or, listen to Handel's pieces on your iPhone or iPod Touch!

New and improved features in the library catalog

We have released an upgraded version of the Library catalog.  Here are details on using the new features:

• Word cloud: You may notice that the new word cloud functions a bit differently. Rather than narrowing your search, it actually expands your search to include both your original search term as well as the term you select in the cloud.

• Browse the shelves: When viewing your search results, you will find that you can click on the call number to browse other titles in the same call number range.

• RSS Feeds: Want to keep track of new titles matching your search? In the upgraded catalog, you can subscribe to an RSS feed. After running a search, you will see an orange and gray “RSS Feeds” button in the top right corner of the screen. To subscribe to the feed, click on the button and you will be taken to a new window displaying links for the available feeds. Right-click on the feed of choice and select “Copy Shortcut” in Internet Explorer or “Copy Link Location” in Firefox. Then, paste the link into your feed reader.  Not sure what a feed reader is?  Feel free to contact us (askalibrarian@wofford.edu or 597-4302).

• My Discoveries, the social side of the catalog: When viewing your search results, you will notice a “Save or tag” link at the bottom of each item. When you click on the link, you will be prompted for a username and password. Click "Register" in the bottom of the popup window to create a My Discoveries account.  After completing the registration process, you will notice that you can add the title to a list, add tags, rate the item, or write a review.

• Export records to Zotero: Click here for instructions on exporting records from the catalog to Zotero.

Visit the catalog:  http://wofford.aquabrowser.com/

If you have questions about using the upgraded catalog or any feedback, please let us know!  Stop by the reference desk, call 597-4302, or email askalibrarian@wofford.edu.

One week left in the Name that Blog Contest!

Thank you to everyone who has participated in the Library's Name that Blog Contest.  For those of you who have not yet submitted an entry, there is still time.  The contest ends on Sunday, February 28 at midnight. 

Here are the details:

During the month of February, the Library will be running a contest to name our new blog and we invite Wofford students, faculty, and staff to contribute suggestions. The contest ends on Sunday, February 28 at midnight. The winning name will be announced Monday, March 8. Please email your suggestions to loreesg@wofford.edu. The first 20 participants will receive 5 Terrier Bucks.  And, the contributor of the winning name will receive a $25 Starbucks gift certificate and, of course, the honor of naming the blog!

About the blog:

We recently launched this new blog and we would like your help with naming it. We will be posting events, happenings and news related to our library, as well as information about the larger information and technology landscape as it relates to libraries and research. For example, we will be posting information about new books and electronic resources added to our collection, as well as topics like search engine news, the latest on digital collections, and research and technology tips.

The Future of the Internet IV

The Pew Internet & American Life Center has released "The Future of the Internet IV."  Here's a clip from their web site:

"A survey of nearly 900 Internet stakeholders reveals fascinating new perspectives on the way the Internet is affecting human intelligence and the ways that information is being shared and rendered. 

The web-based survey gathered opinions from prominent scientists, business leaders, consultants, writers and technology developers. It is the fourth in a series of Internet expert studies conducted by the Imagining the Internet Center at Elon University and the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project. In this report, we cover experts' thoughts on the following issues:

• Will Google make us stupid?
• Will the internet enhance or detract from reading, writing, and rendering of knowledge?
• Is the next wave of innovation in technology, gadgets, and applications pretty clear now, or will the most interesting developments between now and 2020 come “out of the blue”?
• Will the end-to-end principle of the internet still prevail in 10 years, or will there be more control of access to information?
• Will it be possible to be anonymous online or not by the end of the decade?"

 Read the full report

NASA's First iPhone Game

NASA has released an iPhone game -- the Lunar Electric Rover (LER) Simulator.  Here's a clip from Mashable:

"Controlling the rover is quite a simple affair, but you’ll be able to finish various challenges and learn a lot about the Moon and how the Lunar rover works in the process. There’s also an interactive gallery with images of the rover and the Lunar Outpost it supplies"

Get the App
Read the Mashable post

Today in history - February 20

Via Special Collections, the Littlejohn Collection:

On February 20, 1865 William Preston Johnston, an aid to Confederate States' President Jefferson Davis, wrote to James Longstreet to explain that he had been defending the latter against attacks which blamed Longstreet for the Confederate defeat at Gettysburg (in 1863).

UFO files from the UK Government

From Wired Campus:

"Scholars of alien encounters, take note. Britain's National Archives has just released another batch of Ministry of Defence files on UFO sightings. The 24 files, for the years 1994-2000, comprise about 6,000 pages. You can download PDF's free for a month, after which the reports will be beamed to an undisclosed interplanetary location."

Visit The UFO Files site of the National Archives

The New Academic Library: Building Digital Repositories

The streaming video presentation from the Knowledge Bank at OSU is a presentation by Tyler O. Walters about building repositories at academic libraries to support scholarly and research processes.

Watch this presentation here.

Integrating translation into Google Goggles (coming soon)

Google is working on a new feature in Google Goggles that will allow you to take a picture of text and translate it into another language.  For example, you could take a picture of a road sign or poster in a foreign language and translate it into your own language.  What is Google Goggles you ask?  It is a tool that allows you to search the Internet using pictures taken with your mobile phone (currently only available on Androids).

Read Google's Announcement
Learn more about Google Goggles

Kindle App for BlackBerry

Amazon has now released a Kindle app for Blackberry:  Get the app

Majority of reporters and editors now depend on social media sources

Last month, George Washington University and Cision released a report on the use of social media for research by newspaper reporters.  Here's a clip from Cision's news release:

"A national survey conducted by Cision and Don Bates of The George Washington University’s Master’s Degree Program in Strategic Public Relations found that an overwhelming majority of reporters and editors now depend on social media sources when researching their stories. Among the journalists surveyed, 89% said they turn to blogs for story research, 65% to social media sites such as Facebook and LinkedIn, and 52% to microblogging services such as Twitter. The survey also found that 61% use Wikipedia, the popular online encyclopedia.

While the results demonstrate the fast growth of social media as a well-used source of information for mainstream journalists, the survey also made it clear that reporters and editors are acutely aware of the need to verify information they get from social media. Eighty-four percent said social media sources were “slightly less” or “much less” reliable than traditional media, with 49% saying social media suffers from “lack of fact checking, verification and reporting standards.”"

Read the full announcement
For a copy of the complete survey results, go to http://us.cision.com/journalist_survey_2009/

The library's current exhibit

Our gallery is currently displaying an exhibit from special collections and archives on Slavery and African-American Life in the Upcountry, based on documents from the various parts of special collections. We invite you to come check out the exhibit. In the meantime, I just posted a link on the Archives blog about the exhibit, which you can check out here.

Here's one of the images, a receipt for the purchase of a slave in 1857 by Professor James Carlisle.

SCARRED JUSTICE: The Orangeburg Massacre 1968

Did you miss the S.C. ETV national Independent Lens broadcast of Scarred Justice in early February? If so, here is some good news. The film is available on DVD in the library's audiovisual collection.


“This is one of the most important events of the civil rights movement that almost no one knows. Our job as documentary filmmakers is to shed light on incidents that have not been fully considered; to raise questions that will contribute to the discussion of accountability so as to help insure that this kind of tragedy never happens again.”

- Bestor Cram & Judy Richardson, Producers


SYNOPSIS

On February 8, 1968, eight seconds of police gunfire left three young men dying and at least 27 wounded on the campus of South Carolina State College in Orangeburg, S.C. All of the police were white, all of the students African-American. Almost all of the victims were shot from behind as they fled the gunfire that erupted without warning.

The Massacre happened after four days of student protests to desegregate the city’s only bowling alley. It was the first time ever police opened fire on students on a U.S. campus. Two years later Kent State would shock the nation.

This powerful yet disturbing documentary film explores the eye-witness accounts of student protesters and police officer participants. Interviews with former Governor Robert McNair, the prize-winning journalists who covered the story, and many others, provide a compelling account of the price paid in America’s struggle for racial justice. It raises questions about an event that has yet to be resolved.


FOR A DETAILED FILM DESCRIPTION AND TRAILER, SEE THE CALIFORNIA NEWSREEL WEBSITE.

Scarred Justice: The Orangeburg Massacre 1968

10 Technology Ideas for Libraries

The next issue of American Libraries has an article entitled "10 Technology Ideas Your Library Can Inplement Next Week." Here is the list of ideas -

1)Create a library video tour to welcome people that's accessible 24 hours a day.

2)Use SMS to send patron alerts and notifications.

3)Feed your library's blog posts into Twitter.

4)Improve customer service by developing a technology skills list for your staff.

5)Create a special-event wiki.

6)Help your catalog evolve with personalization.

7)Put together a Guitar Hero tournament that will attract non-users to your library.

8)Use Facebook for chat reference.

9)Collaborate and communicate with internal blogs.

10)Hold a themed unconference to tackle important issues.

Read the entire article here.

Photoshop App for the iPhone 6 million downloads later

from Techcrunch: "The Photoshop app lets you share and edit up to 2 gigabytes of pictures stored on Photoshop.com. It allows you to do basic photo editing on your iPhone, including cropping, rotating, filters, effects, and borders."

"Both photos and videos taken on your iPhone can be uploaded to Photoshop.com and viewed through the app. Photo sand videos can be shared via emailed links."

"The Photoshop app is also available on Android and Windows mobile."

Download from iTunes

How does "Mad Men" maintain historical accuracy? Librarians, of course.

"No Rest for the Query," a fun story about the remote reference services offered by the New York Public Library.

The writers of "Mad Men," for instance, call frequently while working on the show. For example:
"Right now on taxi cabs you have lights that say 'off duty,' and they wanted to know if those lights were on in 1963," said Maarseveen, whose desk is piled with books filled with such Big Apple arcana.
"They also wanted to know what was scheduled to be on TV the day of the Kennedy assassination," he said.

Some of the questions are beyond the reach of Google, which often generates more results than answers, said Samantha Thompson, who manages ASK NYPL.

"We're there for those times when what you find on the Internet is insufficient," she said.

Read the full story.

New German-language periodicals available online to us Terriers

Wofford's library recently gained online access to a half-dozen German-language periodicals. Check'em out!

WOLFRAM/ALPHA: Computational Knowledge Engine

This is not a search engine. Instead of searching the Web and returning links, it generates answers to questions by doing computations from its own internal knowledge base.

How is WOLFRAM/ALPHA different from Wikipedia? Here is a quote from the WOLFRAM/ALPHA website regarding the comparison made between the two sources of information: “Wikipedia gives you pages of narrative about topics. WolframAlpha computes answers to specific questions you ask, just giving facts, not narrative. WolframAlpha often includes sidebar links to Wikipedia.”

Examples by topics range from Mathmatics, Statistics, Data Analysis and Compter Systems to Socioconomic Data, Music, Culture and Media plus many more categories.

URL=http://www.wolframalpha.com/

OAIster is back!

The friendly, free interface for OAIster is back.  OAIster is a union catalog of digital resources held by academic institutions worldwide.  According to the most recent statistics, OAIster provides "access to 23 million records for open-archive collections, contributed by more than 1,100 organizations worldwide."

Visit the new OAIster search page
Tip:  Use the Advanced Search to limit by format (for example: audio, video, or image) in the "Resource Type Phrase" menu.
Read the announcement

Victorian Valentines

The New York Public Library has a special feature for today -- Victorian Valentines.

A Selection of Victorian Valentines from The New York Public Library

Happy Valentine's Day!

"Blood Done Sign My Name"

"Blood Done Sign My Name," a new film based the book written by Duke professor (and friend of Wofford's own Jim Neighbors) Tim Tyson will be premiering next week. Parts of it were filmed just across the border near Charlotte.

Rumor has it that the film will be showing in Greenville (S.C.) next weekend. Look for it in the Charlotte and Shelby areas as well.

Excerpt of IMDB synopsis (contains spoilers): "A drama based on the true story in which a black Vietnam-era veteran is allegedly murdered by a local white businessman. The plot focuses on the role of a local high school teacher and the civil unrest that followed..."

Audio: An NPR interview with Tim Tyson about the book, recorded in 2004.

Official Trailer:


Mini-doc from Duke U.:

Dr. Phil Racine will speak in the Library Feb 12 at 4PM. Join us!

Please join us Feb 12 at 4PM in the Library gallery for a lecture by Wofford History Professor Emeritus Dr. Phil Racine. His talk is entitled "Slavery in Spartanburg County," and is being held in association with the "African-American Experience in Slavery and Freedom" exhibit (now up!) in the Library's basement gallery.

Don't miss this opportunity to hear this expert in Spartanburg 19th-century history.

Top 50 University Open Courseware Collections

The DIY Learning blog has compiled a list of the top 50 open courseware collections.  Courseware collections are digitally published educational materials organized as courses (1) and include video, audio, and text files.

Check out the DIY Learning List

(1) OCW Consortium's Definition

Free Online Textbooks

A new web site, Open Educational Resources Center for California , pulls together a list of 400 free, online textbooks.  As you might guess from the name, the site was created for educators in California, but the resources included on the web site are freely available to anyone.

Read the article on Wired Campus
Visit Open Educational Resources Center for California

iCyte 2.0

"iCyte enables users to save all or parts of a web page of interest, tag it, annotate it, share it and reliably return to it later." (from Smart Libraries) iCyte works with Firefox versions 3.0 and 3.5, and Internet Explorer versions 7 and 8. It's a browser plug-in, so you must install it on each computer you use to log into your iCyte account.

Learn more about this plug-in by clicking on the iCyte link.

Barry Lopez's works in our library

No doubt you've heard that the nature writer Barry Lopez is speaking in Leonard Auditorium at 7:00 PM on Tuesday, February 9th.

Check out the works by him in our library.

Name *this* Blog Contest

We recently launched this new blog and we would like your help with naming it. We will be posting events, happenings and news related to our library, as well as information about the larger information and technology landscape as it relates to libraries and research. For example, we will be posting information about new books and electronic resources added to our collection, as well as topics like search engine news, the latest on digital collections, and research and technology tips.


During the month of February, the Library will be running a contest to name our new blog and we invite Wofford students, faculty, and staff to contribute suggestions. The contest ends on Sunday, February 28 at midnight. The winning name will be announced Monday, March 8. Please email your suggestions to loreesg@wofford.edu. The first 20 participants will receive 5 Terrier Bucks and the contributor of the winning name will receive a $25 Starbucks gift certificate and, of course, the honor of naming the blog! Let the games begin!

How I learned to stop worrying and love the bomb video

"How I learned to stop worrying and love the bomb video," via Wired.

Videos of nuclear bombs tests, and a 1946 newsreel video depicting Hiroshima one year after the atomic bomb was dropped on that city.

In Motion: The African-American Migration Experience

In Motion: The African-American Migration Experience.



A brief description of this resource, product of the New York Public Library's Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture:

In Motion: The African-American Migration Experience underscores and explains the extraordinary diversity of African Americans living in the United States today. For the first time in history all the components of the African Diaspora are gathered together. The United States is the only place, the present time the only time. African Americans, Africans, Afro-Caribbeans, Central Americans and South Americans of African descent, as well as Africans and Afro-Caribbeans born in Europe live side by side, each group bringing its specificities, culture, and sense of identity. The ethnic and cultural diversity of the black population has never been greater, and richer. And it is all part of the African-American migration experience.

From the Archives

Things have been busy in the College Archives this winter. So busy, in fact, that I haven't been keeping up with the From the Archives blog. Here's the latest post:

Whatever happened to the archivist?

Illustrated Newspaper Supplements from The New York Tribune

Illustrated Newspaper Supplements from The New York Tribune a sampling of the Library of Congress' Chronicling America.

Coverage: 1909 - 1910.




1910 illustration regarding the Titanic:

Tweets from Space

Soichi Noguchi, an astronaut currently residing on the International Space Station, is using Twitpic to post photos of earth.

Read the article on Mashable
Visit Soichi Noguchi's Twitpic account

World War II Imagery in Google Earth

Yesterday Google added aerial images of European cities during WWII to Google Earth.  Here's a clip from Google's LatLong blog:

"Many of us have heard stories, read books and watched films which show the many impacts of WWII across the world. Today we're giving you another way to understand this period in time - by exploring a new set of historical aerial images, taken over European cities during World War II, via the historical imagery feature in Google Earth. They can now be compared directly to images from the present day."

Read the full announcement

Educause Library Technology Forecast

2010 Horizon Report

The annual Horizon Report has been published by the EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative (ELI) and the New Media Consortium (NMC). It profiles six new and emerging technologies which will impact education over the coming years. Here’s a brief recap of their findings:

Time to adoption:

One Year or Less
Mobile Computing
Open Content

Two to Three Years
Electronic Books
Simple Augmented Reality

Four to Five Years
Gesture-based Computing
Visual Data Analysis

Check out the full Educause/New Media Consortium Report: 2010 Horizon Report

iPhone App for Naxos Music Library

Naxos Music Library has released a free app in iTunes. Here are instructions for accessing this database from your iPhone or iPod Touch:

You will first need to visit the Naxos Music Library from your computer. Click on the "Playlist" tab at the top of the page and then "Sign Up." You will be asked to enter your name, email address, and to create a password. After creating your account, you can log in and create a playlist from any piece within the Naxos Music Library.

You will use this same account user name (email address) and password to log in to the NML app from your iPhone. And, you will be able to listen to both institutional and personal playlists.

Get the NML app
Create an account and playlist in Naxos Music Library

New Library of Congress NAACP Exhibit

NAACP: A Century in the Fight for Freedom

"The NAACP: A Century in the Fight for Freedom exhibition presents a retrospective of the major personalities, events, and achievements that shaped the NAACP’s history during its first 100 years. Currently, the site highlights 70 treasures and will eventually expand to feature more than 150 items."

Visit t he exhibit

HubMed - A Cleaner, Kinder Interface to PubMed

"HubMed is an alternative search interface to the PubMed database of biomedical literature, incorporating external web services and providing functions to improve the efficiency of literature search, browsing and retrieval. Users can create and visualize clusters of related articles, export citation data in multiple formats, receive daily updates of publications in their areas of interest, navigate links to full text and other related resources, retrieve data from formatted bibliography lists, navigate citation links and store annotated metadata for articles of interest." summary from Oxford Journals

The day I searched both, HubMed had more current citations than did PubMed. It's worth a look.

HubMed

Assessing the Future Landscape of Scholarly Communication

The Center for Studies in Higher Education has just released a new report, "Assessing the Future Landscape of Scholarly Communication: An Exploration of Faculty Values and Needs in Seven Disciplines."  The seven disciplines covered in the study are archaeology, astrophysics, biology, economics, history, music, and political science.  The entire report is over 700 pages, but there is an executive summary available.

Read the report